Solo Faces Read Online Free Page B

mouth and drunk the welt of blood.

5
    I N G ENEVA IT WAS raining. The bus station was behind a church. There were only a few passengers when the driver appeared, climbed into his seat, started the engine, and steered his way into traffic to the ceaseless whacking of the windshield wiper and the voice of a comedian on a radio beneath the wheel.
    Soon they were roaring along streets of small towns, barely skimming the sides of buildings. Pharmacies, green trees, supermarkets sailing past. In a front seat Rand sat high above it all. They were crossing railroad tracks, he was looking down into gardens, lumberyards, at girls running in the rain with wet hair.
    The sky went pale. A few seconds later, ominous and near, like artillery, came the thunder. He felt he was being rushed to battle, across borders, through wet fields covered with mist that stretched out on either side. It was summer. The rivers were milky green. There were bridges, barns, cases of empty bottles stacked in yards, and sometimes through the clouds, a glimpse of mountains. He spoke no French. The cluttered towns with their shops and curious signs—he did not take them seriously. At the same time, he longed to know them.
    The lights of oncoming cars began to appear, a sulfur yellow. The rain had ceased. The mountains lay hidden in a kind of smoke. It seemed as if the stage were being set; suddenly, at Sallanches, the valley opened. There, at its end, unexpected, bathed in light, was the great peak of Europe, Mont Blanc. It was larger than one could imagine, and closer, covered in snow. That first immense image changed his life. It seemed to drown him, to rise with an infinite slowness like a wave above his head. There was nothing that could stand against it, nothing that could survive. Through crowded terminals, cities, rain, he had carried certain hopes and expectations, vague but thrilling. He was dozing on them like baggage, numbed by the journey, and then, at a certain moment, the clouds had parted to reveal in brilliant light the symbol of it all. His heart was beating in a strange, insistent way, as if he were fleeing, as if he had committed a crime.
    They arrived in Chamonix in the evening. The square in front of the station was quiet. The sky was still light. He stepped down. Though mid-June, the air was chill. A taxi took two other passengers off to some hotel. He was left alone. The town to all appearances was empty. He had a strange impression, almost a warning, that he knew this place. He looked about him as if to confirm some detail. The hotels that fronted the station seemed closed; there was light in the entrance of one. A dog trotted up to the edge of a low roof and stared at him. Above, in the trees, were the last rays of sun. He picked up his bedroll and pack and began to walk.
    There was a bridge across the tracks. He went in that direction, away from town, and soon was on a dirt road. The pines had begun to darken. He came to a large villa in a garden overgrown with weeds. All sorts of junk was piled along the side, a rusted stove, flowerpots, broken chairs. Above the door was a metal sign: Chalet something-or-other, the letters had faded away. The window casements were deep, the shutters closed. He went around to the back where there was a light and knocked.
    A woman came to the door.
    “Is there a place to sleep?” he asked.
    She did not answer. She called into the darkness of the house and another woman, her mother, appeared and led him up some flights of stairs into a room where he could stay for ten francs—she made it clear by holding up two hands with outstretched fingers. There were bunks with bare mattresses. Someone’s belongings were already there, shoes and equipment strewn beside the wall and on the single shelf a loaf of bread and an alarm clock.
    “I’ll take it,” he said.
    There was a washroom with one bulb. Everything was bare, unpainted, dark with years. He went to bed without dinner that night. It had begun to rain